Trauma & PTSD Treatment

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that some people get after seeing or living through a dangerous event. When in danger, it’s natural to feel afraid. This fear triggers many split-second changes in the body to prepare to defend against the danger or to avoid it. This “fight-or-flight” response is a healthy reaction meant to protect a person from harm. But in PTSD, this reaction is changed or damaged. People who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened even when they’re no longer in danger.(1)

As a Level II trained EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)therapist, I utilize this revolutionary treatment during PTSD treatment to relieve many types of psychological distress. "EMDR facilitates the accessing and processing of traumatic memories to bring these to an adaptive resolution. After successful treatment with EMDR, affective distress is relieved, negative beliefs are reformulated, and physiological arousal is reduced."(1) National Institute of Mental Health. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/what-is-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-or-ptsd.shtml

Likewise, I am a Certified Brainspotting Therapist at Level III & Masters level, and a professional intensive directed by David Grand. “Brainspotting stimulates and promotes deep processing, integrating, and healing activity within the brain. This appears to take place within the brain’s emotional centers at a reflexive and cellular level. It typically results in a de-conditioning of previously conditioned, maladaptive emotional, psychological, and somatic responses and patterns. It appears to stimulate, focus, and activate the body’s inherent capacity to heal itself from trauma.

It is theorized that this rapid-acting therapy taps into and activates the body’s innate ability to process and release “traumatic capsules” which are frozen in primitive survival modes. This may also explain the ability of Brainspotting to often reduce and sometimes eliminate the pain, struggle, and tension associated with physical/medical conditions. The technique processes and dismantles the symptom, the underlying trauma, the somatic distress, and the dysfunctional beliefs at the reflexive core.

Brainspotting is also very useful to access and develop internal resource states and experiences. These resources allow the therapist and client, where necessary, to “pendulate” between resource or positive states and trauma states during Brainspotting to enable more gradual, graded processing and desensitization of intensely traumatic and emotionally charged issues and symptoms.” Lisa Schwarz, M.Ed, Brainspotting Trainer